This piece comes from my “multi-media opera”, written for the Vadstena Academy in 1884, sorry, 1984. I always had a problem keeping centuries apart.

The title of the opera: “Frostblomma i ett nostalgiskt universum.” You figure it out.

Multi-media here means that the piece asked for two singers, two dancers and an actress. All the music was pre-recorded, using electronic sounds.

But don’t imagine that this was some fancy abstract electronics. For me the loss of the original musical parameters (rhythm, harmony and melody) in most electronic music is not acceptable. Timbre has taken the throne, and for me timbre is the least interesting parameter.

The opera was based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe that I embellished upon, partly with a long text of my own. A central aspect of the piece is the tug of war between two principles that I call “Pygmalion” and “Medusa”.

Pygmalion turns the cold statue into warm fleshMedusa with her gaze turns humans into stone